SRO requirements
Leadership, particularly of major digital investments, can be complex and challenging. The SRO of a digital investment plays a vital role in the system of assurance that supports successful delivery.
As the official with ultimate accountability for the investment’s delivery, SROs are required to champion assurance that is fit-for-purpose and aligned to risk and complexity. This is reflected through one of the 5 Key Principles of Good Assurance, as ‘culture and tone at the top’ – requiring senior executives to drive a culture of continuous improvement and transparency through fit-for-purpose assurance arrangements.
Often, SROs are stretched across multiple strategic priorities with many dependencies and risks. Carefully planned and executed assurance will prove to be a valuable partner to a busy SRO, helping them stay on top of the critical issues and to inform better decisions, increasing their chances of success.
To guide the successful delivery of a digital investment, an SRO needs to:
- Promote assurance as a valuable partner of the project through the relevant governance body.
- Actively engage in assurance planning and monitoring, providing advice and escalating when required.
- Acknowledge their own skills, project needs and knowledge gaps and structure the governance body and project team accordingly.
- Ensure the Assurance Plan is reviewed by the governance body at regular intervals and at least as often as the relevant tier requires. This is key to ensuring the plan continues to be fit-for-purpose.
- Ensure assurance providers are suitably skilled, independent and objective.
- Ensure assurance activities are providing high quality assurance information to support decision-making.
- Monitor the implementation of assurance recommendations.
It is important that SROs receive appropriate support and capability development to help navigate the challenges faced delivering a digital investment. The criticality of the SRO role in supporting the success of digital projects means that the DTA will generally not support proposals which have more than one SRO or have the core responsibilities of an SRO delegated to another person.
Global learnings and experience
Strong leadership with clear accountability is a key element of successful project delivery... the overriding requirement is that the SRO is able to devote the necessary time to the project to execute their responsibilities in full.
Support for SROs
From 2025, Senior Responsible Officials of Australian Government digital and ICT projects are required to participate in a mandatory professional development program. The program will support these senior leaders through curated content aimed at uplifting digital and ICT project governance capabilities. More information is available on request from the DTA.
Tiering of investments
Each in-scope investment will be assigned one of 3 tiers under the DTA’s Investment Tiering Model. This model is designed to focus oversight attention and support for applying the 5 Key Principles for Good Assurance on the most important investments. The model also helps ensure lower risk and lower value investments are not unnecessarily burdened by excessive levels of oversight of their assurance arrangements.
The tier of an investment is determined by the DTA in consultation with the proponent agency for an in-scope digital or ICT investment. Tiers are determined during the contestability stage of the investment lifecycle before proposals are brought forward for an investment decision by Cabinet.
- Tier 1 – Flagship digital investments: Tier 1 investments represent the Australian Government’s most complex and strategically significant digital or ICT investments, responsible for transforming the experience of people and business and realising the APS Enterprise view by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations.
- Tier 2 – Strategically significant digital investments: Tier 2 investments are usually complex and strategically significant digital or ICT investments but may not have the same whole-of-government emphasis or the same criticality to the digital agenda as Tier 1 investments or, if they do, they are of lower estimated total cost.
- Tier 3 – Significant digital investments: Tier 3 investments are significant digital or ICT investments. They are likely focussed on meeting the needs of one agency or, sometimes, a small group of agencies. They generally represent lower risk.
The tier is determined through a combination of a weighted priority score and the estimated total cost to implement the proposal. The weighted priority score is calculated through a DTA-led assessment of more than 16 factors which canvass implementation risk and complexity, strategic importance, and the consequences of delivery failure. The DTA conducts this assessment in consultation with relevant agencies.
| Estimated total cost and respective tier | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weighted priority score | $0 to $10 million | $11–$50 million | $51–$150 million | $151–$400 million | >$400 million |
| 0.0–1.9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| 2.0–2.4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 2.5–2.9 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 3.0–3.4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 3.5–3.9 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 4.0–5.0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Depending on the tier your investment is assigned, different minimum assurance planning, assurance implementation and escalation protocol requirements will apply. To confirm your investment tier, please contact investment@dta.gov.au.